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'DRACONIAN' SCHOOL CUTS
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Wednesday, October 20, 2021
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TU board starts move to abolish SROs BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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sharply divided Tempe Union Governing Board last week signaled its intention to do away with school resource officers on its six campuses by next summer. The board also failed to approve a $270,000 contract with Phoenix for SROs at Mountain Pointe and Desert Vista, leaving those schools with what Superintendent Dr. Kevin Mendivil called “a revolving door” of officers that leave no chance for the development of a relationship between police and the school communities. Tempe Union spokeswoman Megan Sterling stressed, “There has been a daily presence on campus since the start of this school year” at both Ahwatukee campuses. “They are off-duty officers, and it is not a consistent person,” she said. “You could have five different people there during the course of the week – hence a ‘revolving door.’” Both votes followed impassioned pleas for and against the presence of uniformed armed officers on campuses as all six high school principals, a representative of the district teachers union, a teen suicide prevention expert, a Tempe City Council member and the top brass in the Tempe Police Department pleaded with the board to postpone a vote. Urging the board to approve the resolution were a collection of parents, a couple teachers and students – mainly from Desert Vista High School – who said cops have no business on
see SRO page 15
The current St. Benedict Catholic Church building (bottom photo) will be radically transformed into a real church edifice (top picture). Parishioners planning that transformation hope to have it ready by Christmas 2022. (Bottom pic:: David Minton/AFN Photographer; Rendering: HDA Architects LLC)
St. Benedict’s overcomes obstacles to a church edifice BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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he road to a real church edifice has been a long and sometimes heartbreaking journey for the congregation of St. Benedict Catholic Church in Ahwatukee.
It began promising enough. In June 2018, just six weeks after launching a fund drive to cover half the cost of a $7 million, 20,000-square-foot church on 48th Street south of Chandler Boulevard, the building
2022-23 Enrollment Begins January 11 www.kyrene.org/discover • 480-541-1000 • LEARNING. LEADING. ACHIEVING.
see BENEDICT page 4